by Selena Scott
She stiffened in his arms, her face buried in his neck, but then he realized she was quaking with laughter. “Wow. You’re totally right. That’s terrible!”
Still laughing, she slid down his body, shaking her head. “Just gimme a second. I’ll get the coffee going when I come back out.”
Chuckling to herself, she closed the bathroom door and Orion was left to stare after her. Gimme a second was as good as an invitation, wasn’t it? She was telling him to stay put. He dug his phone out of his pocket and pressed the button that read the time out loud to him. He still had three hours until work. Which meant his ass was certainly going to go sit in her kitchen and give her as many seconds as she needed.
A few minutes later she emerged from the back hallway. Her face washed, workout clothes pulled on, and -most devastatingly- her hair down around her shoulders.
She’d fallen asleep with it in that tight ponytail last night but this morning it swam against her body, a constantly tumbling waterfall, all the way down to her breasts. He realized now that he’d never seen her in soft clothing, he’d never seen her without any makeup and he’d never seen her hair look like this.
She was like a different woman, walking into her own kitchen with big, bunchy socks and an easy smile on her face.
She was an exceptionally observant woman, so he was certain that she noticed his reaction to her, but she was too busy chuckling to herself and grinding coffee beans and pouring water into her coffee maker. She turned and opened the fridge, then the cupboard. “Cereal? I have almond milk,” she asked over her shoulder.
“Sure,” he said in a gruff voice.
She started in on making them breakfast. “I still can’t believe that was my reaction. I seriously spider-climbed you.”
“If my goal as an intruder had been to carry you away, you would have made it pretty easy for me.”
She poured him a cup of coffee and then slid his bowl of cereal across the counter to him.
“So,” he said, grasping for the rule. “It’s okay that I’m here?”
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
He glanced down at the bowl in front of him, the cup of steaming coffee. “You didn’t let me make you breakfast when you fell asleep at my house. So, I’m confused now. I thought maybe it was rude for guests to stay over if they hadn’t been invited? Not that I cared that you stayed over. I just… I’m trying to figure out the rule.”
Her face softened. “It varies situation to situation. I didn’t stay for breakfast the other day because, well, I was kind of freaking out.”
“And I’m invited to stay for breakfast because now you’re not freaking out?” he guessed.
She swirled her spoon through her bowl. “That’s one way to put it. Although, I’m still freaking out a little bit. As evidenced by me literally jumping on you fifteen minutes ago.”
He reached across the counter and pressed one finger to the back of her hand. “Don’t freak out. It’s just me.”
She shot him a look he truly had no chance at interpreting. “Turns out that’s the scary part.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you were just a regular man this wouldn’t have to be so complicated.”
His stomach dropped to his toes. “You mean if I wasn’t a shifter?”
“No!” she yelped, her eyes wide. “That’s not what I meant at all! I don’t care that you’re a shifter. I just meant that you’re a client. And yeah. You’re you. You have to know that you’re not exactly like other men. It’s confusing.”
“I’m not like other men?” He considered that for a moment. “I am much larger than most other men, I guess.”
She pursed her lips. “And sweeter. And more genuine. And more honest. And… it’s a lot, Orion.”
“I’m a lot,” he summed up.
“A whole lot.”
“Huh.” He wasn’t sure what to say to that. So, he ate his cereal and choked down his coffee.
“This is confusing, huh?” she asked after a long minute, her eyes on her coffee and then on him.
“Yes,” he answered immediately, bringing a small smile to her face.
“I’m not trying to be confusing,” she groaned. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “How about we just concentrate on the sandwiches? That seemed to work well for us.”
She burst out laughing. “Fair enough. Though cereal isn’t treating us too shabby either.”
“Maybe later this week?” he offered. “We could eat more sandwiches?”
“Okay,” she agreed, a thoughtful look on her face. “Actually, there’s this new sandwich place I’ve been wanting to try. Can you meet me at the center on Friday? Around 4:30? I’ll drive us.”
4:30 was way earlier than he’d been expecting her to say. He seriously couldn’t remember a single time when she’d left work that early. But if she was offering, he was accepting. It all only added up to more time with Diana. “Perfect.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Do you think I could handle living alone?” Dawn asked Quill as they sat on her front porch one morning.
It had just rained, but the sun was out now, giving their surroundings a misty, jungle-ish feel. And frankly making Dawn look like a wild woman. Her short hair was curly in the humidity, her cheeks flushed, the patch of sun she sat in lighting her up like a spotlight. Her sundress fell off one shoulder as she leaned forward to paint one of her toenails a very distracting shade of purple.
Quill had come over here to pick her up for a book fair they were going to attend together. It was an expo for young adult and middle grade novels and the library where Dawn worked thought it would be a good idea to send her as a representative. She’d asked him to come along with her because she was going to have to acquire a certain number of titles and though she had excellent taste in literature, her buying and selling skills were abysmal. It was an almost certainty that she would get fleeced by some seller or another if he wasn’t there to guide her.
But he’d gotten the timing confused and ended up at her house an hour and half earlier than he had to be. It hadn’t made much sense to trek back across town to his house, so here they were, killing time on her porch while he did his damndest to ignore her cute-ass toes.
It bothered him that he’d gotten the time wrong. He didn’t usually make mistakes like that. But he’d been all kinds of off recently. Not sleeping well, making mistakes with other clients’ schedules.
And avoiding the Director’s calls. Always avoiding the calls.
It was always stupid to avoid your boss’s calls, but ignoring the Director wasn’t like ignoring Diana. If Diana got fed up with him, she’d just can him. Maybe he’d lose some income and reference. Big whoop. If the Director got fed up with him, he’d lose more than income. Quill shifted uncomfortably, thinking of the scars that laced his back. If he screwed up this thing with Phoenix, Orion, and Dawn, this time the director would do more than string him up and beat the shit out of him.
This time, Quill was certain, he’d kill him. He was pretty sure that’s what had happened to Watt.
A few years ago, Quill might not have thought that was such a terrible fate. When the internment camps had been shut down and the Director’s recruitment program had lost its pipeline and Quill had found himself with nowhere to go and nowhere to be and completely adrift, life had seemed pretty pointless. The Director had given him a goal, not something to live for, exactly, but something to work towards. Now though? As he sat on the porch swing, watching Dawn paint her toenails with her tongue poking out the side of her mouth, Quill realized that he really, really didn’t want to die.
She turned when he still hadn’t answered her question. “Quill?”
“What? Oh, living by yourself? Why would you do that? I thought your situation here was pretty good. Why would you leave?”
“It is good. I love it here. And I wouldn’t leave. I just think that my brothers might be leaving and if
they did, I was wondering if you thought I could handle living on my own.”
“Why would they be leaving?”
“Well, it would be weird for us to be separated, but I think Ida and Phoenix have done the whole sleeping-over thing for long enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon, they just move in to her house.”
That made sense to Quill, while making his blood pressure rise. The Director wanted all three of the siblings. A package. Seeing them split up and separate would make things much harder on Quill.
“Uh huh. What about Orion? I can’t see him moving out anytime soon.”
“Well, after the thing with Diana the other night, I figured it might be kind of the same thing as with Phoenix and Ida.”
Quill’s heart stopped. “What thing with Diana the other night?”
He cursed himself for thinking that taking a little space from Dawn would help him sort his shit out because now he’d gone and apparently missed something gigantic. Like a whole thing with Diana and Orion.
“Oh, she slept over last weekend. And then two nights ago, he didn’t come home at all. I think he was with her. Apparently they’re going out again tonight.”
Cold sweat trickled down his spine. Keeping his secrets from the Wolf siblings hadn’t been that hard. They didn’t know enough about humankind yet to really find him suspicious. Besides, he always had reasons for why he was around, or why he was so observant. He could just blame it on his job at the center. Ida and Wren were the only people he’d really had to fool. Ida naturally believed the best in everyone and then she’d been so lovestruck by Phoenix that she hadn’t been much of an obstacle. And as for Wren, who was sharp as a tack and skeptical, he’d kept a fairly wide berth from her, not letting her get a good hold on why he came around and when.
But Diana?
If Diana started hanging around the pink house, inserting herself into the lives of the Wolf siblings. He was utterly and completely screwed. He’d never be able to recruit them without her noticing. The woman noticed absolutely everything about her clients. She could probably tell you what each of them ate for breakfast. His only saving grace had been that she purposefully ignored Orion under some semblance of professionalism. But now? If she’d given in and started spending time with him? Oh, god.
Quill suddenly knew, with a sick certainty, that he was going to fail. The Director was going to have him killed.
“What’s that look on your face for?” Dawn asked, peering back over her shoulder. Her bottom jaw fell open. “Oh, no. You don’t like Diana do you? I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to, I don’t know, spoil your hopes and dreams or something.”
He chuckled humorlessly. Her guess so off-base it was almost, almost funny. “No. I don’t have feelings for Diana. I just— I’m tired is all.”
“Are you sure? You could tell me if you did. I can keep a secret. And I’d totally understand. She’s so beautiful and organized.”
“I don’t have a fucking crush on Diana!” Quill snapped, suddenly irritated that Dawn was pushing this. Diana’s unexpected presence in Quill’s life was terrible, terrible news for him. But more than anything in that moment, he found himself irritated that Dawn didn’t give a shit that he might have a crush on someone. In fact she’d even volunteered to be his confidante. What a joke. His -literal- head was on the line and he was worried stressing about these stupid feelings for Dawn.
“Okay,” she said, quailing back from him. Her voice was quiet and her hurt apparent in her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to butt in.”
He hated himself for putting that expression on her face but he couldn’t stay there and fix it. He was suffocating in the clear air. Panicking. Watching everything get flushed away.
He stood up. “It’s fine. Look, I just remembered something I have to do. I’ll meet you at the expo, okay? You can drive yourself?”
“I— Yes. Sure.”
He could feel her hurt, confused stare on the back of his head as he jogged down the porch stairs and to his car. He practically peeled away. When he was a few streets over, he parked his car and pulled out his cell phone, his thumb hovering over the Director’s number. He needed to call him and confess all. He needed to just get this over with. He’d be punished, but he wouldn’t be killed. Not yet. He could still salvage this plan.
But then Dawn’s eyes flashed in his mind. Green, striking, so hurt just because he’d snapped at her.
He pictured what she might look like if she ever found out what he was about to do to her family. He pictured what betrayal, hatred, disgust might look like on her face.
“Fuck!” He punched the steering wheel and tossed his phone aside.
He couldn’t do it.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to get his breathing under control. Half an hour later, he drove to the expo, apologized to Dawn for his weirdness, and helped her haggle for books.
Neither of them mentioned his mood from before.
***
“This is not a sandwich shop,” Orion said to Diana, a frown on his face.
“The sandwich shop is down the block. This is a brief stop before we eat sandwiches. It’s not gonna hurt. I promise.”
She planted hands on his back and attempted to give him a little push inside the glasses store. She didn’t even budge him a millimeter.
He’d recently had the thought that he’d go anywhere as long as he could go there with Diana. His only caveat had been the dentist. Yeah, well, apparently he had two caveats. Because he was not letting Diana talk him into getting his eyes checked again. And he really wasn’t letting Diana talk him into wearing glasses. Glasses were stupid, unnecessary human accessories that made a man look like he’d trip over his own two feet if he ever tried to spend a day in the wilderness.
“I have no interest in them shining lights in my eyes and giving me headaches, all right? I’ll pass on the glasses. Let’s just eat sandwiches.”
“Orion!” she jumped in front of him, her high heels making her at least three inches taller than when she’d been standing in her stocking feet in her kitchen the other morning. She didn’t even remotely acknowledge the sour look he was intentionally sending her way. “You don’t have to do an eye exam. I got your prescription from before pulled.” She held up two small pieces of paper and waved them around. “All you have to do is try on glasses and then we can choose a pair and some contacts and you can be on your way!”
“Pass.” He tried to get around her but she got in his way again.
“We have an appointment. It’s rude to miss it.”
“Why the hell do we have an appointment?” he asked incredulously. “Did you make us an appointment? Is that why you wanted to meet so early?”
“Maybe.” She had the grace to duck her shoulders and look a teeny, tiny bit sheepish. “Come on. The whole thing will take fifteen minutes tops. And then we can eat sandwiches and I can rest easy knowing that you at least have the option of having decent eyesight. I don’t like thinking of you out in the world with blurry vision.”
He frowned. She’d found his achilles heel and it was pissing him off. He didn’t want her worrying about him either. But he really didn’t want to go into this damn shop.
“Would you want me to walk around Portland with bad vision?” she asked, her hands on her hips.
“Ugh,” he groaned, putting his hands on his hips and mirroring her position.
A man with glasses walked past them, eyeing their stances, and he ducked into the store.
“Seriously?” Orion pointed at the man through the window. “You want me to wear glasses like that guy?”
Diana turned and looked, her eyebrows coming up. “That guy is hot. So if you wore glasses like that guy, you wouldn’t have a damn thing to worry about.”
Orion’s mouth dropped open. He’d never heard her say anything like that. She rarely swore and she definitely didn’t go around talking about hotness.
“You think that guy is hot?” He jutted an incredulous thumb at the shop. If that was h
er type, then maybe he really didn’t stand a chance with her. Because Orion was certainly not skinny and he was certainly not blond.
She took one step toward Orion, looking at him up from under her lashes and lowering her voice. “I think glasses are hot.”
He frowned.
She frowned, little bit of pink on her cheeks.
He kept frowning.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, holding his eye contact.
“Goddammit,” he muttered, turning on his heel and striding into the store.
He instantly felt his mood drop fifty degrees once inside. He hated stores. They all smelled like plastic and were filled to the brim with a ton of crap that no one in their right mind would ever need. It wasn’t that he was a miser, exactly. He’d honestly felt that Phoenix’s medical bills they were still paying down had been a good investment. He didn’t mind paying that much money for something like his brother’s health. But he pictured how heavy the armoire he’d carried up four flights of stairs this morning was and he thought about spending his hard earned money on a goddamn pair of plastic glasses… He nearly walked back out of the store.
Diana, however, was a smart woman. She grabbed him by the hand and marched him to a chair in front of a mirror, waving away a sales rep as she did so. “Sit here. I’ll bring you some options to try.”
Orion crossed his arms over his chest and sat there sullenly. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and almost laughed. He’d never looked more like Phoenix in his life.
Moments later, Diana was back with a tray with about thirty different clear-lensed frames on it. He resisted the urge to bat the whole thing out of her hands, toss her over his shoulder, and sprint them down the block for sandwiches.
She set the tray down, picked up the first pair and shoved them on his face, not even giving him time to recoil.
“No.” His reaction was immediate, taking them off.